Well if this is the new GW US website then expect less news from them as it appears to have removed the old News page from the US site and replaced it with nothing. Not even an RSS feed.

Really seems odd to create a new website that has less functional items in it for users that the last iteration.

yeah, the “news” section does seem a bit nerfed… maybe that is a effect of 40K 5th ed!

It looks like it’s an international rollout - brand new here in the UK too. News aside, I think it’s a heck of a lot more efficient and improved.

There’s one piece of good news in the non-event that is the new store….a link to Specialist Games still exists. And all the downloadable PDFs have been consolidated onto the GW website proper.

I’m a web developer by trade and I fully expected to be able to reel off a list of why the new site sucks here, but I can’t. The new design is fantastic compared to the old one in terms of accessibility and web standards compliance (it still uses inline javascript, but so does everyone else, to be honest). It’s much more attractive too.

I’m a little surprised they didn’t hold off on this til closer to the release of 40k 5th ed. One thing I noticed is they skip the “about 40k” page about the rules and Macragge starter set — I guess they don’t want new gamers being p***ed that they’ve bought a soon-to-be-obsolete product that GW recommended on the site.

It loads a lot faster, but it take more clicks to get to what you want. Looks like they’ve deleted a fair amount of old information. At least Specialist Games are still there.

@Philip. Unless you were being sarcastic (fair chance), don’t they already do everything they can to stifle internet retailers?

The only good improvemen5t I see is that you can now see larger pictures of their models.

I hear you Zac.

I’d hope that the news element is coming soon after they’ve got the store relaunched - the store’s the nuts and bolts of the site for a retail business at the end of the day so it doesn’t surprise me it’s the focus of the site.

News feeds are one of those things that I think the majority of people don’t ‘get’ - at least in my experience of business clients.

And, again from my experience, it’s a certain kind of tech-savvy web user that uses them rather than an average consumer. So it may have been quite low on their list of requirements.

Note: I’m not saying I agree with that approach merely that quite a few companies and individuals just aren’t that ‘net-aware’ when it comes to what sites can do (SEO benefits etc.) or want to pay for the additional elements if they would be charged for them.

And, again from my experience, it’s a certain kind of tech-savvy web user that uses them rather than an average consumer.

Even the News page they had on the US site would be fine. The UK and Canadian sites didn’t even have something that useful.

Oh so part of the problem is the regional variations - any idea if the websites are all now done by one team - kinda just splicing in the regional aspects or is it different sites for different areas like before?

THe US Store:

We are currently performing maintenance on our web site. Please check back at a later time. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Thank you for your patience.

Sounds like as we discuss it the web team is making changes realtime - kinda interesting to listen to - anyone think of doing screen captures on some of the barebones parts so we can compare them in a couple days or a week?

Furthermore: Opera shmopera! If you actually browse the web with opera, you’re used to having a fall-through plan as about 30% of what you visit (especially ecommerce apps) is likely to critically fail in Opera. It’s the red-headed step-child browser. I use Safari almost exclusively (as a mac user) and run into similar problems. In such situations, just boot up Firefox or IE.

Sad, but it’s the way the world works…

It appears to be back up at the moment. Maybe the page you saw was a load error caused by too many people hitting the site.

Zac your facilitating other people breaking the internet :P

to the web dev guys who posted - any guess on when content would pop up on a site this size? are we talking in terms of days, weeks, months?

Just Looking through Specialist games section and a lot of the articles are missing!

New content, don’t hold your breath. It’s not a matter of the site’s size - it’s manpower, and priority. Right now content is obviously a waaaaaaaaaaaaaay back seat priority to giant pictures of boxed sets (excitement!) and then there’s the fact that like 2 guys are left (who have little web experience) to attempt to put out new articles via a nightmarish WSYIG content interface.

Oh, expect new releases and such to be there on time, but not the interesting words and pictures that form cohesive articles. It costs money to employ creative persons to push interesting/useful articles about the hobby. Money obviously better spent on spiffy drop down menus. Black Gobbo’s dead. Them days are over. Expect more dull, bland, White Dwarf style state approved “new release of the month” crud on the web. Occasionally. Maybe.

A little of both. I know some of the guys who’ve been through this web transition process these past months and listened to their gripes about it along the way. Pretty poorly managed affair. As to the future, that’s mostly speculation - because they don’t have jobs anymore…

Whatever, GW does what it does, logic be damned. Sometimes I swear it’s a bunch of dudes in a UK office rolling a D6 and consulting a chart when it comes to decisions! Be interesting to see what comes next I suppose.

Lets try not to turn this into a general GW gripe-fest :-)

As a humble web user rather than a grand “web designer”, I think its rubbish.

Why is two thirds of my screen wasted space, with only the central third being used?

Its not as if they not got the stuff to display because there are those three stupid little scrolling areas in the middle.

Why duplicate the functionality of my browser (I have a perfectly good scroll bar on my right hand side already) in a tiny subwindow with the added “bonus” of disabling my scroll wheel?

And, yes, I do realise that the old one was fixed width as well, but new websites are meant to improve on the old ones, not repeat their errors, and at least the old one flowed the content all the way down so you could easily see all they had to offer.